WBS India Alumni Webinar – The Journey to Social Entrepreneurship

Join us for our next virtual WBS India Alumni event organised by WBS Global Alumni Engagement ambassadors for India

Following our many previous successful F2F and virtual alumni events in India, we would like to invite you to join us for our next virtual WBS India Alumni event organised by WBS Global Alumni Engagement ambassadors for India, and the WBS Global Alumni Engagement team.

The event: join us for a live webinar with WBS alumna Gauri Agrawal, founder of Sirohi and Warwick alumna Soumya Dabriwal, founder of Project Baala who will speak about building a social enterprise, the challenges involved, solution building, and building a sustainable business.

The webinar will be chaired by WBS Assistant Professor Giorgia Barboni, whose areas of research interest include Development Finance, Behavioural Economics and Household Finance.

Our speakers:

Gauri Malik is a Finance & Economics graduate from Warwick Business School. She began her career as an investment banker at Deutsche Bank but two years into that role, ‘cabin fever’ took over, where Ivan Illich’s words, "blind acceptance can do more harm than good" resonated with her. Bringing this realisation to her future career, combined with analytical and data focused skills from her banking job, she founded the Skilled Samaritan Foundation (SSF) in early 2012. As a social entrepreneur, she works to provide sustainable livelihoods to women and provide them a life of respect and financial independence.

Soumya Dabriwal, an economics graduate from the University of Warwick has extensive experience in the development sector and has worked in Ghana, South Africa and Haryana. During the course of her stay in Ghana, she observed that girls in the community skipped school 3-4 days a month during their periods and used material that was highly detrimental to their health. The fact that it wasn't limited to that community but was a global phenomenon gave birth to Project Baala. Project Baala is an innovative menstrual health solutions provider working to end period poverty and period illiteracy while generating employment.

Since its inception, Project Baala has reached four countries and impacted 250,000 women and girls, conducted 900+ workshops spread across 16 states of India and distributed 750,000 sanitary pads. The aim is to reach 2 million menstruating women and generate employment for 300 women by 2025.